Then it should still have the capacity to turn back on, Karla noted.
“Hallelujah.” I breathed a sigh of relief. “Can you find any schematics about the place? Even some pictures or something to give us an idea of other ways inside?”
Give me a minute, the voice in my head noted. I’ll consult my father.
“How would she know anything about this place?” Natalie questioned. “Even if our universes are similar, it’s not like schematics and blueprints would just be lying around… ”
Oh, crap… I had forgotten the internet wasn’t a thing here in the nuclear wasteland. And if Natalie was only three years old when everything went to hell, she wouldn’t have known anything about it.
“Natalie,” I began, “did you parents ever talk about the internet? Or maybe the ‘world wide web?’”
“They made plenty of jokes about it.” The blonde Scavenger shrugged. “But I thought that was all it was. Jokes. The idea that you could hop on a machine and then view millions of pages of information or talk to people on other continents always seemed too absurd to be real.”
“That’s not all,” I added with a snicker, “you could look at cat videos, too.”
“See?” Natalie demanded. “That doesn’t sound real at all.”
“It was real, alright,” I assured her, “and it still is, in my dimension. And in a few minutes here, Karla is going to use the internet to find us all the information she possibly can about this power plant.”
So, Natalie and I sat there in silence as we awaited Karla’s report.
Meanwhile, the Rubberface who was standing guard on the main entrance looked bored out of his mind. He took a few paces back and forth before he threw his shotgun between his hands a few times, struck a few action poses, and then leaned back against the wall.
“I’m not gonna lie,” I admitted, “this Rubberface is kinda fun to watch.”
“Try to think of that when he’s attempting to rip our heads off,” the blonde Scavenger chuckled.
“There’s something I’ve been curious about… something that’s been bugging me the whole time I’ve been in this dimension… ” I pondered aloud. “How come all the Rubberfaces we’ve seen so far have been guys?”
“What makes you say that?” Natalie tilted her head curiously.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “They’re all really tall, muscular, and broad-shouldered creatures, and their voices sound really baritone.”
The corners of Natalie’s mouth twisted into a subtle smile, but she tried to hold in her amusement.
“Hunter… ” she giggled. “Rubberface men and women look exactly the same. The only way you can tell is by looking at their genitalia and, trust me, nobody wants to do that.”
“That’s messed up.” I shuddered. “All the more reason to blow their ugly butts to smithereens.”
My father was able to find the blueprints for the power plant, Karla spoke up suddenly. Their servers had surprisingly good encryption, but his AI was able to break through. It appears there are only two entrances that let you in from the outside. Otherwise, you’d have to break through a window or wall. Or, you could always wait for one of the mutants to open up an emergency exit from the inside.
“Is that sarcasm I detect?” I gasped as I feigned shock. “I think we’ll take our chances with the main doors. What about the inside?”
Fairly standard build… the voice in my head explained. There’s the main reactor, surrounded by all the proper equipment to keep it from going nuclear. Then there’s a bunch of hallways with various machinery… a break room… a few offices... If you want to turn the whole thing back on, though, I’d guess you need to be in the operator’s room. That’s the building right beside the reactor. Of course, things could be a bit different since this isn’t our dimension, so keep your eyes open.
“Then that’s where we’ll have to go,” I decided. “How far away are the two entrances to the operator’s room?”
Not close at all, Karla sighed. By my calculations, about a half a mile’s worth of building.
“Which means half a mile’s worth of enemies… ” I muttered. “Are you sure there’s no other way inside?”
Like I said, Karla shot back, unless you want to go through a window or wait for another door to open by chance, not really.
“Hunter?” Natalie spoke up. “I just had a crazy idea.”
“I’ll take anything at this point,” I admitted. “What is it?”
“Can you ask the voice in your head what exactly is inside of the large tube of concrete?” she continued.
“Natalie wants to know what’s inside the reactor core,” I relayed to Karla.
Just your standard reactor pieces, she answered nonchalantly. It’s mainly a containment structure, built to shield the energy put off by the reactor inside and a pressure vessel to separate the reactor from the containment structure.
I repeated the information for Natalie, and she seemed to get lost deep in thought.
“So, it’s mostly hollow?” she asked.
“I’d imagine, but what exactly are you getting at?” I scratched my head and sighed.
“We have another way in,” she proclaimed and pointed at the structure. “Take a look. There’s a large chunk of the roof that’s missing from the reactor building, and a bunch of rungs on the outside that go all the way up to the top.”
No way…
“Please tell me you’re not thinking what I think you are,” I gulped.
“I most certainly am.” The blonde woman grinned. “I think we should try to get up there and then rappel down into the building.”
Multiple alarms seemed to go off in my brain at the same time, and I felt like I was about to have a panic attack.
“That’s way too risky.” I shook my head. “What do we even have with us? Nylon and twine? How the hell is that going to hold our weight?”
“The nylon is ten-millimeter rope,” Natalie reminded me. “It’s the kind we often use for climbing and securing ourselves to structures at dangerous heights. It’s almost like fate told you to grab it so we’d have it for this very moment.”
Thanks a lot, fate…
I hated heights. Like, really hated heights.
I could do creepy crawly bugs and vermin… I could do tight spaces… but heights?
Not a chance.
“Uh… I don’t think we have anything to secure ourselves to,” I argued, “so we’re kinda screwed if our ropes snap off when we’re halfway down the structure.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Hunter,” Natalie chuckled. “We’ll tie it to one of those large concrete beams on the side. Those things aren’t going anywhere any time soon.”
Well, crap. Maybe there wasn’t any way out of this.
We needed to get to the operator’s room, and it was right next to the reactor. Not to mention, we had no idea just how many Rubberfaces were inside of the building. For all we knew, there could be hundreds of the mutants waiting for us when we walked through those doors.
Going straight into the reactor would be the quickest way from point A to point B, and it would also probably be the least messy.
But, then again… The heights.
Your heart rate is increasing again, Hunter, Karla’s voice broke me out of my trance. Is everything alright?
“It’s fine,” I reassured the woman. “Natalie just suggested we rappel down into the reactor so we aren’t seen by the Rubberfaces. Is that even, like… safe?”
That’s a brilliant idea! the voice in my head gasped. Why didn’t I think of that?